Thursday 3 May 2012

H&F to ship poor out of borough

More leaked documents. You have to think that there are some civil servants working inside Hammersmith Town Hall who don't much like the political masters they are working for because another revealing document has made its way out - this time to the Guardian - who have broken the story that our Council are actively looking to move 500 people up out of this borough and up to Derby.

And that's just the start of it - plans are also afoot to deny those who are considered no to be making "an economic contribution" (translation: the unemployed) tenancies for longer than 5 years. 

This is also an old story, first broken by Paul Waugh in the Standard in 2009, in which he revealed similar plans, again centred on the White City Estate in W12 and linking them to comments Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh had made about council housing "warehousing" poverty and turning into "ghettoes". And this is the man who will shortly be handed responsibility for, er, White City.

Greenhalgh is of the 'radical' wing of Conservatives, along with one or two others in senior positions. He and his colleagues seem to genuinely believe in a 21st Century version of Victorian ideas that the tougher you are with poor people the better it is for them in the long run. 

And yet they are capable of less draconian but no less innovative schemes to tackle unemployment and social malaise as we saw in this project in Shepherd's Bush back in August last year. 

The problem is that it's a lot easier and cheaper simply to ship people up North than it is to invest in schemes that actually try and include people such as the InComE project in Shepherd's Bush which tries to encoiurage social mobility. And Boris has already said that he will simply 'delay' plans to get rid of people like this - not stop them. Voters may wish to consider this at the polling booth today.

10 comments:

  1. Kosovo-style social-cleansing, as a prominent politician once said.

    This is the most telling comment:

    "The current system does not promote personal aspiration or provide tenants with any incentive to try to move into home ownership"

    Because obviously the only aspiration worth anyone's time is to own a home. Here's an idea - perhaps security of tenure and not worrying about a mortgage can enable other, better forms of aspiration?

    What next? Only home-owners should have the vote?

    Vile man, vile party.

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    1. Hear hear, when did 'getting a foot on the property ladder' become the highest aspiration anyway? I've heard 18 yr olds who should be learning about the world moaning about not being able to get their feet on it. What a drab sad waste of young life.

      You make a good point about other kinds of aspiration, such as making a contribution to wider society through talents other than just making money. It may be true there are whole families of wasters watching Jeremy Kyle, I have no experience of them personally, but I do know there are also low paid carers, musicians, artists, nurses, mechanics etc etc who have roots in the area.

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    2. I agree. I remember as a kid people making jokes that getting a mortgage was pretty much the beginning of the end of your life. Now everyone wants one!

      Bettering yourself isn't about having more stuff or a bigger house - it's something a little more profound than that. Unfortunately politicians really don't seem to care about that. People are just economic units to be shifted and managed, doubly so if you've found yourself dependent on the council for accommodation.

      You make a good point about the diversity of people within the borough - having lived here my whole life it's one of the things I've enjoyed the most. I worked for several years behind a bar in Hammersmith and we got people from all walks of life, rich or poor. If the council has it's way the borough WILL become a "ghetto" - but of the rich.

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  2. Just to play devil's advocate here but is it fair that a family of people, none of whom work, can live in a house that another family, all of whom work long hours, can't afford to live in...?!

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    1. well stuart i would say rent control would go a long way to fixing that problem, so the rich and poor can live in same area,
      but i think there is more going on with this policy than " fiscal fairness"
      shirley porter comes to mind

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    2. Is it fair that people who work long hours for low pay should be pushed out of their area in favour of a newcomer just because the newcomer has more money? Or the ability to borrow more money?

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  3. Housing benefit is also paid to people in work if they are unable to meet their rent.

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  4. Rent control has to be well thought out. My father on an average wage at the time was left a property by his uncle which was let at controlled rent to a large family. The rent couldn't cover the upkeep of the house - it's fair to say the family weren't the best at looking after it and every month there seemed to be an overflowing bath or broken bannisters/windows/door locks. He was forced to sell it - it obviously wasn't worth a lot - to someone who turned out to be less conscientious with quite sad results for the tenants. (Rachman came along soon after.) My great uncle probably thought he was making a good investment at the time he bought the house but rent control skewed the market and led to eventual exploitation of many of those people the controls were designed to help.

    As usual ordinary people, both tenants and well meaning landlords lost out. I know people now who have bought to let thinking it would provide a pension for them one day, not wishing to exploit, but to provide a home for someone and support for themselves in older age - it can all go horribly wrong for any number of reasons, good and bad.

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  5. Get out the people most likely to vote Labour and move in those most likely to vote Conservative. Result is even more power and feathering their own nest for the future.

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    1. Yes, take a trip to the flats behind Tate Britain - used to be social housing for ordinary people. Sold off by Lady Porter for just that reason.

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